 Good afternoon everyone. I'll welcome all the people present here. The topic of my presentation is Mastering Content Planning, a journey from beginner to expert. But before I begin, let me introduce. My name is Meena and I'm a master analyst at Code Wing Solution. I've been in the digital marketing industry for over six years and within these six years I've got an opportunity to work with some amazing content writers. And together we have produced a lot of great content such as blogs, articles, newsletters, social media posts and so on. But in the early days of my career, I actually didn't enjoy working with content. I thought it was boring, repetitive. But as I got more experience, I started to see the value of good content. How powerful tool it can be to generate more website traffic, leads and sales. And over the time, I also developed a content marketing strategy that actually worked for me. So in today's presentation, I'll be sharing my journey with you. I'll talk about the challenges that I've faced, the lessons that I've learned and the success that I've achieved. And I hope my journey will inspire you and help you in your own content planning. So let's begin. For the people who is wondering what is content marketing? It's a process of planning, creating, distributing, sharing content. And these content can be blogs, newsletters, emails, podcasts, infographics, videos and so on. Now how the people or the organizations use different strategies to produce a high quality content is a content marketing strategy. Content marketing strategy varies a lot. It depends upon the working style of the people or the goal set by the organization. Basically, business owners adapt such strategy to attract, engage, convert and retain their customer. When I started out as a content planner, my planning process was quite simple. I followed four-step process. Ideation, research, creation and optimization. The first step of my process was to brainstorm content ideas. I would think about the topics that my audience would be interested in. Then I would come up with a list of potential content ideas. And the next step was to do the in-depth research to gather the relevant information. And once I have all the information that I needed, I would assign the content to my team, that is content writers. And finally, I would also ensure that the content is of high quality and also optimized for the search engine. But as time went on, I started to face difficulties in handling, keeping track of all the produced content and the content that is yet to be produced. Imagine you work with a company which goal is to produce 10 articles per month. That means within a year, you have to produce 120 articles. Imagine tracking all those content that is produced and that is yet to be produced all by yourself is going to be a challenging and quite hassle. And this is when I learn the concept of content calendar. Content calendar is a schedule which tells you or shows you what you want to publish and when. For example, as you can see with this simple editorial content calendar, we all can see at glance who is working at what, the stays they are at and when the content will be ready for the publishing. So with the help of content calendar, it helped me to stay organized. It ensured that I was publishing the content on a regular basis. And if I happened to collaborate with any other team or the organization, it ensured that we have a smooth collaboration. And it also helped me to measure my content marketing efforts. So I would highly suggest to all the new content marketers out there to adapt such concepts in your planning process. And for this, you may use tools like Excel, Google Sit, which is absolutely free, or you may also use other marketing tools that will help you with it. I personally use a Google Sit, which is online and pretty easy to use. So with this, my content planning process that used to be a four-step became the five-step process by adding the content calendar. As time went on, so I realized I was just looking at my own content. I wasn't looking at what my other competitors were doing out there in the industry. So that's when I decided to do the competitor analysis. I analyzed their content to find out what they were doing well and what I could learn from them. I found out they were doing a lot of things that I wasn't doing, as they were writing on different content topic ideas. They were also using a different content formats or platforms, such as blogs, videos, newsletters, social media posts. And I also found out they were targeting the audience in a very different way. And they were also using the different engagement strategies to retain their customer. Once I started to incorporate competitor analysis in my planning process, I started to see a big difference. I was able to generate more content ideas, write better content, and reach a wider audience. Now for the people who are wondering, how do we find our competitors? Or how do we even do the competitor analysis? Let me tell you how. First, you need to identify who is your real competitor out there in your industry. And for that, you may use or take a help of online, which is Google, then find out which competitor is actually creating the content. And the next step is to analyze the content. Find out the topics they are covering, the platform they are using. Are they doing the video marketing? Are they doing the social media marketing? If yes, that means you may also need to adapt those strategies into yours. Then find out the strength and weakness. Find out the areas that you think they are doing so well, and the areas that you think they could have improved a lot. And lastly, learn from their success and failures, and create a strategy to create a better result. So with this, my content planning process became a six-step process. Beside competitor analysis, there was another critical step that I was completely missing out. Understanding my target audience. As a beginner, I thought content marketing is all about attracting as many as people I could to my website. But I soon realized I was completely wrong. By doing that, I was not just wasting my time, I was also wasting my team's time and effort, and also the cost of the organization. Content marketing is actually about attracting right people to your website. The right people are the one who is likely to buy your product or services. The right people are the one who have desires, needs, and pinpoints that your product or services can solve. So once I started, for example, let's say I'm writing a blog on the topic of content writing, then who could be my target audience? It could be a male or female. It could be a people, look at it anywhere around the world. It could be a people or the organization. The factors are all limited, but all should have one common interest that is interest in content marketing. Therefore, for the article, my ideal target audience would be the people who is interested in content marketing, or the organization who is looking for the content marketing strategy. Once you know your target audience, you can create a content that is specially tailored to their needs. This will help you to create a content that will help you to attract more right people to your website and hopefully convert them into your customer. Besides knowing your target audience, you should also need to understand their pinpoints. What are they looking for? Is it a product or services? What are the challenges they are facing in their daily life? And how can your product or services can solve their problem? Once you know the pinpoints of your target audience, you can create a content that specially addresses their problems. This will help you to create a content that is more valuable to your audience and hopefully help them to achieve their goals. The mistake that I made in the beginning, not knowing my target audience and attracting as many people as I could to my website is a quite common mistake that almost new content marketers make. Therefore, I would highly recommend to all the content marketers out there to always start your planning process with understanding your target audience. This is the critical step that you should not be missing out. So with this, my content planning process became the seventh step process. For a few years, I followed this exact same process and it was also working pretty fine, but I knew I could do better as we all know there's a room for improvement. As a content marketer, the lesson that I've learned is it's very important to monitor your content marketing efforts. This will help you to identify what's working and what's not so that you can make a necessary adjustment to your content strategy. And for this, I rely on KPIs, key performance indicators. KPIs are the specific metrics that you track to measure the performance of your content. And some of the examples or the common KPIs of content marketing are website traffic. Now, these traffic can be a direct, referral or organic, engagement metrics like average time on page, page views, bounce rate, engagement metrics like number of leads or number of cells. But tracking these KPIs, you can get the clear pictures of how well your content is performing and the areas that you could improve. And by continuously monitoring and analyzing these KPIs, you can iterate and optimize your content strategy. Now, before you start tracking these KPIs, let me share some of the tips that I've learned so far. First, not every KPIs is right for you or for your business. It's very important to understand the goal of your company. What does your company wants to achieve with your content marketing? Is it to create a brand awareness? Is it to generate more leads? Or is it to drive more cells? Based on that, track only those KPIs that is very essential and right for you or for your business. And for the next tip is you would need the help of a tool to track your KPIs. And for that, you may use tools like Google Search Console and Google Analytics which are absolutely free or you may also use other premium third tools like ATRF or Sembrus. And the next tip is monitoring your content marketing effort is not a one-time process. You need to monitor your strategy or your content time and again. And based on that, you need to make a necessary adjustment to your content as well as to your strategy. As I'm speaking of updating the content, the next tip that I would like to share that you could add in your content planning process is updating your content or content repurposing. This is another lesson that I've learned as a content marketer. Even the best content can be improved. No matter how well you have done the keyword research, how well your content is written, it's not always possible to get success at first attempt as there is always a room for improvement. So it's very important to monitor your KPIs and based on that, you need to make a necessary adjustment to your content as well as strategy. So my final planning process steps looks this. The eight-step process. So let's recap everything that I've covered so far, but we'll take an example. Let's say you work with a company that sells a software for a small business owner. Let's get more specific. You work with a company that sells a travel booking plugin for the travel agency. And your responsibility is to create a strategy. Now before you begin, the foremost thing that you need to understand is the goal of your company. What does your company wants to achieve with your content marketing efforts? Is it to create a brand awareness, generate more leads, or convert those leads to our sales or customers? For this campaign, let's say the goal is to generate leads and convert them into a customer. That means to boost the product sales. Now first step in your planning process should be understanding your target audience. This is the most important step that you should not be missing out. You should be able to segment the right people to your website. And if you cannot, the whole planning process is going to be a waste of time. For example, you targeted the people who is also interested in travelling or just travelling. Then you are not going to achieve your goal. That is to boost the product sales. And similarly, your audience will also not be able to achieve their goal. That is to find the solution of their problem. So for this campaign, the ideal target audience are the travel agency owners or the tour operators or the people like travel guide, tour guide who is looking forward to open the agency in the future. Now the next step in your process should be brainstorming content ideas. Think about the topic ideas that your audience would be interested in then gather the relevant information with the help of research along with company analysis. Find out what are the companies or which companies are selling similar product like yours. Then analyse their strategy. The topics they are covering. The content formats or the platform they are using are they doing the video marketing? If yes, are they able to achieve their goals that is to promote their product and convert them to a customer? If yes, then find the strength and weakness to find out the areas that they are doing well and the areas that you think they could do well and create your own content strategy. Once you have a good understanding of your audience your competitors and content landscape start creating content calendar. This will help you to stay organised and ensure that you are publishing the content on regular basis. And the next start creating content. Make sure your content is informative, engaging, visually appealing and not to forget, we also need to make sure it's optimised for the search engine or it's of high quality, easy to read and well structured. And at last, monitor your content marketing efforts time and again and make the necessary adjustment as required. So with this planning process you can create a content that is more engaging, informative and valuable to your audience. You can also follow this exact same process for other marketing as well for the video marketing, email marketing or social media marketing. Now before I begin in this session I would like to share the final tips with you today. As we all live in the surrounding that is ever-growing and ever-changing so does the digital marketing world and technology. So with this changing environment recently I have adapted using of AI tool in my content planning process and for this I use chat GPT and Google bar. I wouldn't say this is a mandatory step but I would highly recommend to at least try them out as soon as possible and find out what are its benefits and how can you use in your content planning process to wrapping up. I want to leave you with this thought content marketing is a journey not a destination. It's all about constant learning adapting and creating a content that resonates with your audience and content marketing isn't just about creating content it also superchases your company's self by addressing their needs answering their questions and providing valuable solution through your content you are not just building a trust but you are also driving your potential customers to make a purchase. Therefore I would say embrace the challenge stay curious and never stop learning so that's all from my side now I would like to make the stage floor for if you have any questions.